94 (II)
Responders
"I feel like death is the System's favorite thing after strife," Shiv replied, slightly dour. And then he considered his own self, his own Path. "And it might be why I'm so favored. But that doesn't really explain either of you."
"It does," Valor said. His mind felt weak, but there was a clarity to him, an intensity to his thoughts that hadn't been there before. "It does. It is all because of you, Shiv," Valor said. There was no accusation in his voice, but he was certain. “All of you. Listen. I think I have… a working theory as to why you are enduring so much attention from the System.”
"I will remain in contact through my Psychomancy," Uva said. "In the meantime, I will watch. Someone has to keep an eye on the survivors."
"Is that really necessary?" Adam asked. "It seems overkill. They're already badly traumatized. They're scared."
"We don't know what the mercenaries might do. And there are also a few diplomats and essential personnel here. They belong to organizations and nations that have been in contact with Compact for a while. I have already intercepted over a hundred escape attempts."
"Escape attempts?" Adam asked suddenly. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"It was unnecessary. I resolved it,"
she said with a simple finality."What do you mean you resolved it?" Adam asked.
"They're still alive," Uva answered. "They will only wake, however, when I decide to return some of their faculties to them."
And once more, the Young Lord shuddered, and the triangle of strategic checks and balances between them shone clearer than ever.
"That is something else I must talk about," Valor said. "The balance is deliberate." At that declaration, Adam, Shiv, and Uva's minds all went cold at the same time.
"There are many theories as to how one becomes System-favored," Valor began. He still seemed weak, but he was animated. He stayed near Adam at all times, and the Young Lord's sun kept him supplied with enough soul-boosting power that he sustained himself. The insides of the Garden of Bountiful Alloy had been rendered sparse as Can Hu harvested a final chunk of iron from the tree on which it grew. The garden was bare, but slowly new buds were sprouting. New bits of metal and material would form in due time. For now, this place was exhausted, and it served just fine as a refuge for the team during their current predicament.
"Some believe that achieving rapid growth, having multiple epiphanies at once, and prevailing against great challenges is enough to make one favored." Valor paused for emphasis. "I disagree. Now, what makes you System-favored goes back to what the System wants."
"Strife," Adam said.
"Correct, but it is how you interact with strife that catches the System's attention. Take Shiv, for instance. When you landed in the Abyss, what happened?"
Shiv blinked. "I died."
"Yes. And then, when you resurrected?"
"Well, then I fought a cave biter baby for a while, and it ate me. Several times. Crushed me more than a few." Shiv winced. It was odd. It felt like a lifetime ago. To think that a cave biter infant would be a threat to him now was laughable after the hellish fight he just had with the Recollector.
“Indeed. And now I think the System is confused. You have a Unique Skill. You want to know what makes a skill Unique? It is the way a skill has never been classified by the System before. The way the skill has never been experienced or noted by the System before. No one else has died and come back like you. When one undergoes the ritual of the dichotomous soul in the Necrotech Legions, anytime one of their bodies is destroyed, they do not technically die. Their soul simply melds back together.”
Everyone was listening attentively, and Shiv especially found himself curious about the workings of the Necrotechs’ undying nature.
“You exist in several places at once. It is basically averting death by sacrificing portions of physical bodies, becoming a spiritual hydra in a sense. You, Shiv, do not do that. You can literally die. Furthermore, you come undone, but your spirit does not dissolve because it's bound to your vitality. Your mind does not disintegrate because it's bound to your spirit. And all this comes together to form a strange substance that somehow stabilizes and reverts you to the last instant before you were dead. And your consciousness is fundamentally not interrupted. The process is continuous, even if you were knocked unconscious."
"And so," Valor said, before he groaned again. Adam steadied the Legendary Pathbearer and poured more azure light into him. "Thank you, Adam," Valor muttered. "Every time you lose focus, though… My skills and soul weaken… And so," he continued with a hint of strain to his voice, "though Shiv is growing stronger, though the System does recognize his Revenant as a Unique Skill, it is also confusing it. Your death feeds your own legend. Your own mana grows as you die. But the strife clings to you still. It notes your deaths, your repeated defeats in these conflicts, yet you do not go away. You persist. And I think… I think you are confusing the System, or you have caused it to develop a point of infatuation with you."
Shiv stared back. He didn't know what else to say. "A point of infatuation?" he muttered.
"Much of the system is still a mystery to me. I cannot proclaim to be the master of the System, to know it so deeply, especially now, in my broken, broken, scattered state," Valor spat, as if disgusted with what he was right now. "However, I do know this. I knew I was System-favored after I survived… After I murdered my mother, I fled from her great castle, leaving it burning behind me, escaping multiple Pathbearers that were greater than me, that had many more skills than I did. It was a defiance of the odds. More than that, it was ridiculous. It was a miracle I survived. And as I wandered through the chaos, I escaped into the wilderness. I endured the greatest struggles thereafter."
"What do you mean?" Uva said.
"I mean, the attempts on my life kept coming." Valor's voice was hard. "As soon as I fled into the wilderness, a group of creatures came upon me. Basilisks. I was wounded, then. I had to rely on my prodigious Stealth Skill to stay alive, but even so, they nearly killed me. While I was recovering, I had to master Adept-Tier Metabiology to pair that with my Biomancy to cure myself of a fever, and then subsequently to rid myself of a terrible poison that was inflicted upon me because I chose to recover in the wrong cave and was bitten by one of the most venomous insects in all the Abyss."
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Shiv winced as he thought about Valor’s struggles. It reminded him a bit of his journey through the Abyss. How would I get through that? Shiv thought. And then he realized he did have a blueprint of getting through it by dying over and over. He did die over and over. The Umbral Wilderness was a dangerous place. And to cross that, wounded, alone, and without a Revenant skill… Shiv felt his pulse quicken slightly. Yeah, the only reason I'm still here is because of my Revenant Skill. I'd be dead-dead otherwise. Valor’s a hard bastard.
And then, Valor let out a sigh. "And then there was the mana storm."
"The what?" Adam cried.
"Yes, a mana storm. That nearly killed me immediately. Do you know how fast the temperatures can shift within a mana storm? I had Pyromancy and Cryomancy. Neither at Adept. By the time I emerged from the storm, I was an Adept in both and had lost an arm. I was then promptly attacked by a group of Manticores."
"For the Ascendants' sake," Adam gasped.
"The Manticores weren't so bad, especially because a group of Dimensionals promptly appeared. You see, they emerged from a gate left by the mana storm, and I didn't notice, for I was badly injured. I tried to resist them, and they beat me brutally, until they broke every bone in my body and took me away to their realm."
By now, both Adam and Shiv reacted with shared sighs. Uva winced constantly.
"Broken Moon," Shiv muttered. "That’s godsdamned hell."
"Hell was when they started torturing me. For you see, they didn't have Biomancy in their realm, and they were amused that I had enough knowledge to put myself back together. It was under their cruel tutelage that I first developed Psychomancy. I was there for approximately six months. Six months, they forced me to fight in their strange extra-dimensional arena. Six months, I trained, I toiled, I tested the limits of their psionic inhibitors, planning my escape. When I eventually did, leading an uprising, I left through the gate from which they came, toppling their city, and found myself fleeing back into the Umbral Wilderness, just as wounded as I was months ago, after I escaped my mother's castle. This was when two other mana storms came for me."
Adam clutched his head. Shiv could tell that he would have called Valor a liar, except this was Valor, and more than likely, Valor might have been understating the sheer, nightmarish tribulations he had to endure.
By this point, though, Valor let out a bitter chuckle. "I was so battle-hardened, I didn't even care anymore. I marched off into the storm, and that was how I developed Aeromancy. Do you see my point here?"
"Yeah," Shiv said. "Being System-favored means the System keeps trying to kill you in more and more violent ways."
"It seems like that," Valor said, "but it is rather that the System constantly tests you, throwing greater and more severe challenges that you just barely have a chance to survive. And if you do, it feeds you, it rewards you, it nourishes your spirit from the sheer amount of mana generated during the struggle. By this point, I was still mostly an Adept. My Stealth Skill was at Master, but that was it. Frankly, without my prodigious ability to hide, I should have died long, long ago. But even so, I only became a Master after leaving those two storms. Six months, Shiv. Six months to your… What was it, a week?"
"Something like that," Shiv replied. He was starting to see Valor's point.
"You become a vortex, a magnet for all conflict once you are favored. It is like the world bestows a hidden quality to you. A hidden judgment. ‘This one refuses to die. This one will stand and fight and endure in the face of impossible, overwhelming odds. This one will make for a good story.’"
There was a growl at the end of Valor's voice. "And that is what is happening to you, Shiv. You do not die. You refuse. You don't stay dead. And so it sends greater and graver threats. It whispers things to you. It gave you Foreshadowing in part because of whatever happened during the ritual your parents performed, but also probably because it can draw you into more conflicts that way. It can invite more people to stand against you, to place you against adversaries you have no business facing. What happened at Passage was absurd and unlikely, but it was also to the System's desires. The Quests you keep getting; they are attempts to find where your story might end, to feed a grand conflict. And with every subsequent moment, it is only building."
"Then what about us?" Uva asked, extremely curious as to why she and Adam were also growing so fast.
"Because you have been caught in his vortex," Valor said with a burst of passion. "Shiv refuses to die. The System tries and tries to end him, has done things beyond the absurd to kill him and make him stay dead. For most, there is a point of struggle they hit, and they have to surrender. They have to take a moment to recover. They back away. And because they back away, because they avoid a fight, their narrative does not become one of constant, extreme, and high-frequency conflicts. Constant, extreme conflicts that they should have no business surviving. But Shiv’s life has been nothing but conflicts he should have had no business surviving."
"My entire life," Shiv muttered. All of them looked at him. "I hunted lesser vampires," he said, "in the ruins, as a Pathless. I was trying to get a Path. Didn't happen, as you know, but I killed a hundred of them before the Aviary bastard killed me, and I got my Path.”
"And that is another problem," Valor said, shaking a hand at Shiv. "That builds upon your narrative. You are a maelstrom of strife, whether you want it or not. And everyone who stays near you, everyone who spends any prolonged time with you, who has faced these incidents with you and come out alive over and over again, will inevitably become System-favored just because of the colossal threats it will continuously send at you."
"And so," Adam muttered, swallowing, as his expression looked stunned. "You're saying that because the System keeps killing Shiv, but he doesn't stay dead, he only prevails after coming back, that he is, effectively, beyond favored."
"Yes," Valor finished. "And because you are with him, because both of you have chosen to bind yourself to him in one fashion or another, and both of you fought alongside him, survived things alongside him, more than anyone else, you, too, are beyond favored. You, too, are being nourished by conflicts far beyond your scale. And though I don't know if the System is conscious, if it has a personality, I can tell you this: it plans, it dreams of futures, and it has desired outcomes it might like to see, grand conflicts that take shape eons in advance. Adam, it gave you the vambrace for a reason. It gave you your current skills for a reason. Look at your capabilities and think of what someone like you can do to Shiv, specifically you."
And Adam did. And Shiv did. They looked at each other and shared a mutually uncomfortable expression.
"Uva, you too. Because the System made Adam, because it does not know how to respond to Shiv, it too makes something that is easy and capable of removing Adam from the field, should its interests call for it."
"And so we're all primed to fight each other eventually?" she asked.
"Yes," Valor said. "All Legendary Pathbearers have experienced this. It is called the inevitability of strife, and System-favored know this more than anyone else. People see you fight for those you care for, and it will make sure someone somewhere is more than capable of finishing you, that they have the right combination of skills, experiences, and more to bring you to a final end."
The mood within the Garden of Bountiful Alloy turned black and dreadful. It only soured further as a notification appeared in everyone's vision the next moment.
Quest Gained: Eliminate the COCKSUCKING FUCKS WHO STOLE MY MOTHERFUCKING GATE AND DROPPED AN UNSTABLE ANIMANCY CORE ALONG WITH A RANCID ELDRITCH INTO MY FUCKING DIMENSION! AND THIS GOES FOR YOU TOO, FUCKASS! IF THE ONE THAT DID THE SHIT IS GETTING THIS QUEST TOO, KILL YOURSELF! KILL YOURSELF BEFORE I COME FOR YOUR ASS WITH MY OBSIDIAN COCKKKKKKKKKK! GET TO IT, CUNTS! YOU GOT A MONTH!
Success: +20 Levels for a Selected Skill; +10 Levels for a Selected Skill; Two [Hidden] Master-Tier items; The Enchanted Heroic-Tier obsidian dildo I will have used to fuck the bomber’s corpse until I will have made a stillborn gore baby with his or her ass; Adept-Tier Skill Evolution or some shit—JUST KILL THE MOTHERFUCKER!
Failure: I pour UNHOLY FIRE AND RUIN INTO GATE THEBORN AND INCINERATE ALL YOU REMAINING COCKSUCKERS! I WILL POUR SO MUCH FUCKING FIRE THAT THE ENTIRE UMBRAL WILDERNESS WILL BURN! I MEAN, REALLY FUCKING BURN. FOR LIKE A MONTH! AND TELL THE FIVE FAITHS TO LICK MY TAINT!
Sincerely,
Lord Scorn the Ruin-Forged
Uva let out an exhausted breath as she slumped over onto the floor like a sheet of paper. Shiv balled his fists and gritted his teeth. Adam let out an exhausted, ragged cry of despair and fell to his knees.